The early lithic productions of Island Southeast Asia: Traditions or convergences?

Island Southeast Asia has been the subject of intense prehistoric investigations since the seminal work of Eugene Dubois in the late XIXth century. This has resulted in several discoveries of a very diverse type of lithic productions of oftentimes debated age. Recent and old excavations have now secured the production of stone artefacts as early as 1 million years on Flores Island, 800,000 years on Java Island, 700,000 on Luzon Island and at least 118,000 years on Sulawesi Island. Along with these findings, several surface collections which most certainly date back to the Lower Palaeolithic are known, and adds to the diversity of the lithic productions. In this paper, we report what is at stake regarding our current knowledge over the early lithic productions of Island Southeast Asia, without giving more importance to one type of artefact over another. After describing the findings from each islands taken one by one, we compare the similarities and dissimilarities between these sometimes isolated and sometimes connected geographic entities. It appears that each of these islands might have had its own evolutionary trend with its own rhythm.